The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari

Last tuesday night was my first experience with The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, and I found it to be a very peculiar little film. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is considered one of the most influential German Expressionist films and one of the greatest horror movies of the silent film era. What I found most interesting about the film was the choice of set-pieces the director, Robert Wiene, employed to suggest an emotional state through each scene. The world of the characters, which is mostly told through the means of a flashback, is created with very stylized sets. The buildings and walkways are very jagged and angled, and the walls are never solid shades of gray, but rather are painted in brooding shapes and pigments. The hallway of the asylum is stands out to me as a great example. When you think of a real life asylum, you could probably imagine a very sterile environment, white walls, and a simple but organized design. In this film, however, the walls seem to be as insane and unstable as the patients they house. Intentional or not, Director Robert Wiene's set pieces create a very vivid idea of a dream (or nightmare) turned into reality for this film.

Un Chien Andalou

Un Chien Andalou is a short film created by spanish director Luis Buñuel with the collaboration of surrealist artist Salvador Dali. Running at the length of sixteen minutes, the film is composed of several scenes with no clear chronological order, and no real plot. Unlike classical narrative form, which usually identifies a problem and shows how characters work through them, the content of Un Chien Andalou is purposefully jumbled and devoid of meaning. Scenes are cut at odd times, or lead to new ones that have no connection to previous ones. This choice of filming pertains to the subject of dream logic. The idea of the film itself came from the shared fascination for what the human psyche could create that the two men both shared. Buñuel made it a point in his writings to express that when writing the script, between him and Dali, "no idea or image that might lend itself to a rational explanation of any kind would be accepted." The only means to interpret the film itself would have to come from psychoanalysis. The film was not meant to convey a story, but instead act as a conveyor of artistic ideas. The characters have no real place in the story, but instead act as nameless individuals one might expect to see in a dream setting.